ch. The donkey's legs were
broken, and when a throng of Arabs, who gathered at the Spaniard's cry,
had cut away its panniers and dragged it out of the water on to the
paving-stones of the street, the film covered its eyes, and in a moment
it was dead.

At that the man knelt down beside it, and patted it on its neck, and
called on it by its name, as if unwilling to believe that it was gone.
And while the Arabs laughed at him for doing so--for none seemed to pity
him--a slatternly girl of sixteen or seventeen came scudding down the
arcade, and pushed her way through the crowd until she stood where the
dead ass lay with the man kneeling beside it. Then she fell on the
man with bitter reproaches. "Allah blot out your name, you thief!" she
cried. "You've killed the creature, and may you starve and die yourself,
you dog of a Nazarene!"

This was more than Israel could listen to, and he commanded the girl
to hold her peace. "Silence, you young wanton!" he cried, in a voice
of indignation. "Who are you, that you dare trample on the man in his
trouble?"

It turned out that the girl was the man's daughter, and he was a
renegade from Ceuta. And when she had gone off, cursing Israel and his
father and his grandfather, the poor fellow lifted his eyes to Israel's
face, and said, "You are very kind, my father. God bless you! I may not
be a good man, sir, and I've not lived a right life, but it's hard when
your own children are taught to despise you. Better to lose them in
their cradles, before they can speak to you to curse you."

Israel's hair seemed to rise from his scalp at that word, and he turned
about and hurried away. Oh no, no, no! He was not, of all men, the most
sorely tried. Worse to be a slave, torn from the arms he loves! Worse to
be a father whose children join with his enemies to curse him!

He had been wrong. What was wealth, that it was so noble a sacrifice
to part with it? Money was to give and to take, to buy and to sell,
and that was all. But love was for no market, and he who lost it lost
everything. And love was his, and would be his always, for he loved
Naomi, and she clung to him as the hyssop clings to the wall. Let him
walk humbly before God, for God was great.

Now these sights, though they reduced Israel's pride, increased his
cheerfulness, and he was going out at the gate with a humbler yet
lighter spirit, when he came upon a saint's house under the shadow of
the town walls. It was a small whitewash